SAN FRANCISCO — Google won permission Friday to maintain its website in China and keep its toehold in the world’s most populous nation after bowing to pressure to eliminate a virtual detour around the country’s online censorship requirements.
Entering search requests at from within mainland China now requires an extra click, a change made last week to appease communist regulators. Users who click anywhere on the page are then taken to a site based in Hong Kong, which isn’t subject to Beijing’s censorship rules.
Since March, Google had been automatically rerouting search requests from the mainland to the Hong Kong service.
The small concession was enough to persuade China’s regulators to renew Google’s Internet license for at least another year, the company said. There was no immediate statement on the website of China’s Internet regulator, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
It’s the latest twist in a diplomatic dance that’s been unfolding since Google vowed in January to end its four-year practice of omitting search results that the Chinese government considers subversive or pornographic. Google reversed course after blaming Chinese computer hackers for an attack aimed at stealing the company’s technology and e-mail information from human-rights activists.
Even if Web surfers in mainland China click on to get to the Hong Kong search engine, China’s government can still block results by using technology controls commonly known as its “Great Firewall.” Google and the Chinese government have been trying to uphold their conflicting principles while protecting their economic interests.
Details of the agreement
STILL IN CHINA: Google’s website in China is keeping its Internet license after the company relented to regulators and stopped automatically sending search requests to Hong Kong, where the same online censorship rules don’t apply.
THE CONCESSION: Mainland China users now need to make an extra click on before they are transferred to the Hong Kong search engine.
THE COST: The additional click could diminish ‘s traffic and drive Web surfers to more convenient options. That could result in less ad revenue for Google.
